Celebrating the dreams and realities of spaceflight in the past, present, and retro-future. New posts Wednesday-Friday.

Lament for Buran

Abandoned launch complex, Buran assembly facilities and launch fields

Last year I posted a selection of pictures from the abandoned Energiya-Buran assembly facilities and launch fields. I’ve long been fascinated by the Soviet space program — particularly Buran (“snow-storm” in Russian), which had such a vast scope, and yet had only one unmanned flight before cancellation. Now wild dogs live among the dead machinery, grasses slowly break up the concrete, and everything else is rusting in place. It makes me sad.

Sad enough to write a poem about it, in fact.

Lament for Buran
by Danielle Signor

A sleeping giant, left in place
Against the stark horizon stands,
Arms folded, longing to embrace
A rocketship with loving hands.
The future once was vast and near,
All gleaming steel and gantries high.
Such wondrous dreams that foundered here!
They wait, abandoned like the sky.